The effect of social media influercers inthe context of two – step flow theory: An investigation on the gourmet accounts in instagram

The development of mass media changes the forms of communication and socialization patterns of the society. While this change is developing very rapidly, there is a need for new concepts and models for those interested in determining and analyzing the rate of change. In this sense, the concepts and models included in the literature of communication scientists provide a meaningful material for understanding the content of rapidly changing communication. The phenomenon of social media has been developing at a dizzying pace since its emergence. In this development, a new set of facts and concepts emerge. One of the most popular phenomena in social media today is the concept of social media influencers which includes social media influencers. Social media influencers have the power to influence the masses by broadcasting their content from their own platforms. However, it is controversial in which areas these impacts are more and less. This study focuses on investigating the effects of social media influencers. In this context, in order to limit the universe for gourmet influencers, 7 accounts were examined with purposive sampling method from the list of gourmet influencers on MyNet.com pages of 2017 and Yemek.com pages of 2018. These 7 social media influencers were evaluated before and after their restaurant recommendations on instagram pages. The arithmetic means of liking interactions of the recommended restaurants' instagram pages were evaluated. According to the findings, it is seen that social media influencers have a significant effect on the preferences of people, thus considering the context of research constraints, the effect of the influencers on the preferences of consumers is affirmed.